Tuesday, 10 August 2010

TIFF 2010: Canadian Goodness at the Festival

Today we were treated to a whole slew of press releases featuring Canadian features, shorts, jury members and Pitch This participants at this years Toronto International Film Festival. I always look forward to the announcement of Canadian films, one of the primary reasons I ever started writing about film at all was to share the love and spread the word on Canadian film and TIFF is one of the best places to see Canadian, especially films from Quebec which rarely grace out regular theatres here in Toronto.

Included in the lists we have the first title released from the Midnight Madness program, and will open this years Midnight Madness program and that is Fubar II. I can't even imagine the craziness that will ensue at that screening! Films that I'm really looking forward include new works from great Canadian directors including Denis Côté with Curling, Denis Villeneuve with Incendies and Xavier Dolan with Les amours imaginaires / Heartbeats. We also have a fair number of thrillers in the mix with Good Neighbours and Repeaters, documentary goodness with Force of Nature: The David Suzuki Movie and music to our ears with Bruce McDonald's Trigger.

Let's take a look at the full list of titles, and remember that the new premium screenings status is in are in effect this year and may apply to World or North American Premieres and to jog your memory, premium screenings are described as follows: "We have refined our definition of a premium screening around the experience you will have. These are screenings that are World or North American premieres and offer a premium experience including a red carpet event."

4 comments:

Yes, I'm a HUGE Bessai fan. Some other good stuff there but that's the one I'd be jumping through hoops to see. Hopefully it makes its way to VIFF as well. His films tend to do better on the West Coast for some reason.

I can tell you that Xavier Dolan's second film was so overrated in Quebec. In fact, expect to see a script in which the writing is a little bit poor and the characters are under-developed.

I wished I lived in Toronto. However, if I had the chance to attend to the TIFF, I'd see these Canadian films: Repeaters, Daydream Nation, High Cost of Living, Jaloux, Oliver Sherman, You Are Here, Modra, A Night for Dying Tigers, Small Town Murder Songs, Incendies, Good Neighbours and Trigger.

Oh well, I guess I should wait for the Festival du nouveau cinéma (which takes place a month after the TIFF), which screens Canadian films that were at the TIFF.